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Rural society in the People's Republic of China encompasses less than half of China's population (roughly 45%) and has a varied range of standard of living and means of living. Life in rural China differs from that of urban China. In southern and coastal China, rural areas are developing and, in some cases, statistically approaching urban economies. In northwest and western regions, rural society is still perceived as lowly and primitive. Basic needs such as running water and accessible transportation are a problem in these areas.

History

Founding of the People's Republic
One of the major avowed objectives of the Communist Party of China (CPC) during its rise to prominence between 1921 and 1949 was the improvement of the standard of living of the average Chinese citizen, the vast majority of whom were rural dwellers. During the pre-1936 period, the CPC played a major role in transforming rural life in areas it influenced or controlled. A major area was land reform, where control was taken from traditional land owners and wealthy peasants, and appropriated to the state, that is, collectivized. China in the early post-1949 period saw increases in mechanization of agriculture, the spread of electricity, running water, and modern technology to rural areas. However, by the late 1950s, much remained to be done.

Mao noted that most benefits were accruing not to the rural areas, where the vast majority of Chinese still lived, and who were the ostensible focus of the revolution, but to urban centers. Identity card systems channeled unequal degrees of resources, including food rations, to urbanites and rural dwellers. The "rustication" of the Cultural Revolution failed.

Great Leap Forward
During the Great Leap Forward campaign of 1958 to 1961, China's leaders attempted to accelerate collectivization and dramatically increase the pace of industrial production throughout the country, particularly in rural areas. This mostly involved small-scale production, such as the smelting of "backyard" steel. It was thought that through collectivization and mass labour, China's steel production would surpass that of the United Kingdom within only 15 years from the start of the "leap."

An experimental commune was established in Henan early in 1958, and soon communes spread throughout the country. Tens of millions were mobilized to produce a single commodity that was symbolic of industrialization: steel. Approximately 25,000 communes were set up, each with around 5,000 households. The hope was to industrialize by making use of the massive supply of cheap labor and avoid having to import heavy machinery. Small backyard steel furnaces were built in every commune where peasants produced small nuggets of cast iron made from scrap metal. Simultaneously, peasant communities were collectivised.

The Great Leap Forward is now widely seen, both within and outside China, as a major economic disaster. Peasants often abandoned farming to produce steel or work in other industrial production. The three years between 1959 and 1962 were known as the "Three Bitter Years," the Three Years of Natural Disasters (although this name is now rarely used in China), and the Great Leap Famine, as the Chinese people suffered from extreme shortages of food. The period had a profound impact on the history of rural life in China.

Post-Mao Zedong era
Under Deng Xiaoping, urbanization in China has expanded at an unprecedented speed since the declaration of "Reform and Open Policy". new policies in China's economy shifted the approach from collective farming to household-based production quotas, in many ways reversing decades of collectivization efforts. In many areas of China, especially southern and coastal China, the standard of living improved dramatically after Deng's reforms. Township and Village Enterprises brought industrial production to rural areas—predominantly along the southern coasts, helping open these rural communities to greater economic prosperity.
(The idea of industrial production in rural areas had been attempted under Mao but with much more limited success; for instance, industrial plants in highly remote areas found their ultimate production efforts hampered.) Soon, however, an imbalance appeared where northern, interior, and western China remained at a far lower degree of economic development, a situation which persists to the 21st century. However, there are multiple, complex factors contributing to this state of affairs. For instance, distances are much farther, and geography often more challenging, in western and interior regions. Population is more spread out; social structures may also play a role, in that the demographics and social structures of these regions often differ significantly from those of coastal China.

Deng Xiaoping's reforms included the introduction of planned, centralized management of the macro-economy by technically proficient bureaucrats, abandoning Mao's mass campaign style of economic construction. Deng sustained Mao's legacy to the extent that he stressed the primacy of agricultural output and encouraged a significant decentralization of decision making in the rural economy teams and individual peasant households. At the local level, material incentives, rather than political appeals, were to be used to motivate the labor force, including allowing peasants to earn extra income by selling the produce of their private plots at free market.

Rural markets selling peasants' homegrown products and the surplus products of communes were revived under the more free-market economic approach of Deng. Not only did rural markets increase agricultural output, they stimulated industrial development as well. With peasants able to sell surplus agricultural yields on the open market, domestic consumption stimulated industrialization as well and also created political support for more difficult economic reforms.

Development remains uneven, with many highly prosperous areas far outpacing deeply impoverished regions where parents have great difficulty attaining enough income to ensure their children can be sent to school, despite the already-low education fees. Indeed, educational and social imbalances are a salient feature of this uneven development.

One emerging trend since at least the 1990s is the "floating population" or "black (e.g. black market) people", rural migrants (民工 min gong) entering urban areas in search of work. Until recent developments, rural residents lacked the legal permission to resettle in urban areas without approval, yet between tens and hundred of millions did resettle in search of jobs. Many have found work, in the form of construction and other sectors with relatively low wages and benefits, and high workplace hazards. Numerous social issues have developed as a result, namely discrimination of ruralites in cities, psychological isolation of rural migrants, some of which has led to crime. In this sense, then, rural life has "entered" the cities.

Lack of employment opportunities has increasingly made life in many rural regions difficult, hence the apparent enticement to resettle in urban areas. Of course, jobs are still limited, so many do relocate in cities only to find prospects much more meager than they had expected. Statistics suggest a very high proportion of residents of rural areas are unemployed or underemployed.

The development of Special Economic Zones also spurred rural growth in some parts of China.

In 2013, China announced a new plan to reduce poverty and develop impoverished rural regions by raising rural farmers' income growth and reducing obstacles in agricultural development. The plan includes the promotion of new types of agricultural businesses, such as family farms and organized cooperatives, and encouraging industrial and commercial enterprises to invest in agriculture.

Collectivization and class status

The first major action to alter village society was the land reform of the late 1940s and early 1950s, in which the party sent work teams to every village to carry out its land reform policy. This in itself was an unprecedented display of administrative and political power. The land reform had several related goals. The work teams were to redistribute some (though not all) land from the wealthier families or land-owning trusts to the poorest segments of the population and so to effect a more equitable distribution of the basic means of production; to overthrow the village elites, who might be expected to oppose the party and its programs; to recruit new village leaders from among those who demonstrated the most commitment to the party's goals; and to teach everyone to think in terms of class status rather than kinship group or patron-client ties.

In pursuit of the last goal, the party work teams convened extensive series of meetings, and they classified all the village families either as landlords, rich peasants, middle peasants, or poor peasants. These labels, based on family landholdings and overall economic position roughly between 1945 and 1950, became a permanent and hereditary part of every family's identity and, as late as 1980, still affected, for example, such things as chances for admission to the armed forces, colleges, universities, and local administrative posts and even marriage prospects.

The collectivization of agriculture was essentially completed with the establishment of the people's communes in 1958. Communes were large, embracing scores of villages. They were intended to be multipurpose organizations, combining economic and local administrative functions. Under the commune system the household remained the basic unit of consumption, and some differences in standards of living remained, although they were not as marked as they had been before land reform. Under such a system, however, upward mobility required becoming a team or commune cadre or obtaining a scarce technical position such as a being a truck driver.

Decollectivization
Collectivization and other political processes led to widespread famine and tens of millions of deaths. In the late 1970s, administrators in provincial-level units with extensive regions of low yields and consequent low standards of living began experimenting with new forms of tenure and production. In most cases, these took the form of breaking up the collective production team, contracting with individual households to work assigned portions of collective land, and expanding the variety of crops or livestock that could be produced. The experiments were deemed successful and popular, and they soon spread to all districts. By the winter of 1982-1983, the people's communes were abolished; they were replaced by administrative townships and a number of specialized teams or businesses that often leased such collective assets as tractors and provided services for money.

The agricultural reforms of the early 1980s led to a confusingly large number of new production arrangements and contracts. Underlying the variability of administrative and contractual forms were several basic principles and trends. In the first place, land, the fundamental means of production, remained collective property. It was leased, allocated, or contracted to individual households, but the households did not own the land and could not transfer it to other households. The household became, in most cases, the basic economic unit and was responsible for its own production and losses. Most economic activity was arranged through contracts, which typically secured promises to provide a certain amount of a commodity or sum of money to the township government in return for the use of land, or workshops, or tractors.

The goal of the contracting system was to increase efficiency in the use of resources and to tap peasant initiative. The rigid requirement that all villages produce grain was replaced by recognition of the advantages of specialization and exchange, as well as a much greater role for markets. Some "specialized households" devoted themselves entirely to production of cash crops or provision of services and reaped large rewards. The overall picture was one of increasing specialization, differentiation, and exchange in the rural economy and in society in general. Rural incomes increased rapidly, in part because the state substantially increased the prices it paid for staple crops and in part because of economic growth stimulated by the expansion of markets and the rediscovery of comparative advantage.

Role of the household
Decollectivization increased the options available to individual households and made household heads increasingly responsible for the economic success of their households. In 1987, for example, it was legally possible to leave the village and move into a nearby town to work in a small factory, open a noodle stand, or set up a machine repair business. Farmers, however, still could not legally move into medium-sized or large cities. The Chinese press reported an increased appreciation in the countryside for education and an increased desire for agriculturally oriented newspapers and journals, as well as clearly written manuals on such profitable trades as rabbit-raising and beekeeping. As specialization and division of labor increased, along with increasingly visible differences in income and living standards, it became more difficult to encompass most of the rural population in a few large categories. During the early 1980s, the pace of economic and social change in rural China was rapid, and the people caught up in the change had difficulty making sense of the process.

Consequences of rural reform
The state retained both its powers and its role in the rural economy in the 1980s. Decollectivization, like the collectivization of the 1950s, was directed from the top down. Sometimes, apparently, it was imposed on communities that had been content with their collective methods. But in permitting households and communities greater leeway to decide what to produce and in allowing the growth of rural markets and small-scale industries, the state stepped back from the close supervision and mandatory quotas of the 1960s and 1970s.

Decollectivization obviated the supervisory functions of low-level cadres, who no longer needed to oversee work on the collective fields. Some cadres became full-time administrators in township offices, and others took advantage of the reforms by establishing specialized production households or by leasing collective property at favorable rates. Former cadres, with their networks of connections and familiarity with administrative procedures, were in a better position than ordinary farmers to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the growth of markets and commercial activity. Even those cadres not wholly devoted to increasing their own families' income found that to serve their fellow villagers as expected it was necessary to act as entrepreneurs. Village-level cadres in the mid-1980s were functioning less as overseers and more as extension agents and marketing consultants.

By 1987 rural society was more open and diverse than in the 1960s and 1970s, and the rigid collective units of that period, which had reflected the state's overwhelming concern for security, had been replaced by networks and clusters of smaller units. The new, looser structure demonstrated the priority placed on efficiency and economic growth. Basic security, in the sense of an adequate supply of food and guarantees of support for the disabled, orphaned, or aged, was taken for granted. Less than half of China's population remembered the insecurity and risks of pre-1950 society, but the costs and inefficiencies of the collective system were fresh in their minds. Increased specialization and division of labor were trends not likely to be reversed. In the rural areas the significance of the work unit appeared to have diminished, although people still lived in villages, and the actions of low-level administrative cadres still affected ordinary farmers or petty traders in immediate ways.

The state and its officials still dominated the economy, controlled supplies of essential goods, taxed and regulated businesses and markets, and awarded contracts. The stratification system of the Maoist period had been based on a hierarchy of functionally unspecialized cadres directing the labors of a fairly uniform mass of peasants. It was replaced in the 1980s by a new elite of economically specialized households and entrepreneurs who had managed to come to terms with the administrative cadres who controlled access to many of the resources necessary for economic success. Local cadres still had the power to impose fees, taxes, and all manner of exactions. The norms of the new system were not clear, and the economic and social system continued to change in response to the rapid growth of rural commerce and industry and to national economic policies and reforms.

Regulations and favors
Increased commercial activity produced a high degree of normative ambiguity, especially in areas like central Guangdong and Jiangsu provinces, where rural economic growth was fastest. Neither the proper role of local officials nor the rights and obligations of new entrepreneurs or traders were clear. The line between the normal use of personal contacts and hospitality and extraordinary and criminal favoritism and corruption was ambiguous. There were hints of the development of a system of patron-client ties, in which administrative cadres granted favors to ordinary farmers in return for support, esteem, and an occasional gift. The increased number of corruption cases reported in the Chinese press and the widespread assumption that the decollectivization and rural economic reforms had led to growing corruption probably reflected both the increased opportunities for deals and favors of all sorts and the ambiguous nature of many of the transactions and relationships. The party's repeated calls for improved "socialist spiritual civilization" and the attempts of the central authorities both to create a system of civil law and to foster respect for it can be interpreted as responses to the problem. On the local level, where cadres and entrepreneurs were engaged in constant negotiation on the rules of their game, the problem was presumably being addressed in a more straightforward fashion.

Family and household
In past Chinese society, the family provided every individual's support, livelihood, and long-term security. Today the state guarantees such security to those with no families to provide for them, and families and work units share long-term responsibility for the individual. The role of families has changed, but they remain important, especially in the countryside. Family members are bound, in law and custom, to support their aged or disabled members. The state, acting through work units, provides support and benefits only when families cannot. Households routinely pool income, and any individual's standard of living depends on the number of household wage earners and the number of dependents. In both cities and villages, the highest incomes usually are earned by households with several wage earners, such as unmarried adult sons or daughters.

In late traditional society, family size and structural complexity varied directly with class. Rural landlords and government officials had the largest families, poor peasants the smallest. The poorest segment of the population, landless laborers, could not afford to marry and start families. The need to provide for old age and the general association between the numbers of sons surviving to adulthood and long-term family success motivated individuals to create various non-standard family forms. Couples who produced no sons, or no children at all, adopted or purchased infants outright. Families with daughters but no sons tried to find men willing to marry their daughters and move into their families, abandoning their original families and sometimes even their original surnames. Families with daughters but no property to attract a son-in-law were sometimes forced to sell their daughters as concubines or prostitutes. The variation in family size and complexity was the result of variation in class position and of the dual role of the household as both family and economic enterprise.

In contemporary society, rural families no longer own land or pass it down to the next generation. They may, however, own and transmit houses. Rural families pay medical expenses and school fees for their children. Under the people's commune system in force from 1958 to 1982, the income of a peasant family depended directly on the number of laborers it contributed to the collective fields. This, combined with concern over the level of support for the aged or disabled provided by the collective unit, encouraged peasants to have many sons. Under the agricultural reforms that began in the late 1970s, households took on an increased and more responsible economic role. The labor of family members is still the primary determinant of income. But rural economic growth and commercialization increasingly have rewarded managerial and technical skills and have made unskilled farm labor less desirable. As long as this economic trend continues in the countryside in the late 1980s, peasant families are likely to opt for fewer but better educated children.

The consequence of the general changes in China's economy and the greater separation of families and economic enterprises has been a greater standardization of family forms since 1950. In 1987 most families approximated the middle peasant (a peasant owning some land) norm of the past. Such a family consisted of five or six people and was based on marriage between an adult son and an adult woman who moved into her husband's family. The variant family forms - either the very large and complex or those based on minor, nonstandard forms of marriage - were much less common. The state had outlawed concubinage, child betrothal, and the sale of infants or females, all of which were formerly practiced, though not common. Increased life expectancy meant that a greater proportion of infants survived to adulthood and that more adults lived into their sixties or seventies. More rural families were able to achieve the traditional goal of a three-generation family in the 1980s. There were fewer orphans and young or middle-aged widows or widowers. Far fewer men were forced to retain lifelong single status. Divorce, although possible, was rare, and families were stable, on-going units.

A number of traditional attitudes toward the family have survived without being questioned. It is taken for granted that everyone should marry, and marriage remains part of the definition of normal adult status. Marriage is expected to be permanent. That marriage requires a woman to move into her husband's family and to become a daughter-in-law as well as a wife is still largely accepted. The norm of patrilineal descent and the assumption that it is sons who bear the primary responsibility for their aged parents remain. The party and government have devoted great effort to controlling the number of births and have attempted to limit the number of children per couple. But the authorities have not attempted to control population growth by suggesting that some people should not marry at all.

In the past, kinship principles were extended beyond the domestic group and were used to form large-scale groups, such as lineages. Lineages were quite distinct from families; they were essentially corporate economic-political groups. They controlled land and, in some areas of China, dominated whole villages and sets of villages and held title to most of the farmland. Like most other late traditional associations, lineages were dominated by wealthy and educated elites. Ordinary peasants paid as much of their crop to their lineage group as they might have to a landlord. The Communists denounced these organizations as feudal systems by means of which landlords exploited others. The lineages were suppressed in the early 1950s and their land confiscated and redistributed in the land reform. Communal worship of distant lineage ancestors lost much of its justification with the dissolution of the lineage estate and was easily suppressed over the next several years. Domestic ancestor worship, in which members of a single family worshiped and memorialized their immediate ancestors, continued at least until 1966 and 1967, in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards destroyed altars and ancestral tablets. In 1987 the party was still condemning ancestor worship as superstitious but had made little effort to end it.

Marriage

The Marriage Law of 1950 guaranteed everyone the freedom to choose his or her marriage partner. Nevertheless, especially in the countryside, there were few opportunities to meet potential mates. Rural China offered little privacy for courtship, and in villages there was little public tolerance for flirting or even extended conversation between unmarried men and women. Introductions and go-betweens continued to play a major role in the arrangement of marriages. In most cases each of the young people, and their parents, had an effective veto over any proposed match.

In the past, marriage was seen as the concern of families as well as of the two parties to the match. Families united by marriage were expected to be of equivalent status, or the groom's family to be of somewhat higher status. This aspect of marriage patterns has continued while the definitions of status have changed. Because inherited wealth was eliminated as a significant factor, evaluation had  been shifted to estimates of earning power and future prosperity. The most desirable husbands have been administrative cadres, party members, and employees of large state enterprises. Conversely, men from poor villages have had difficulty finding wives. From the early 1950s to the late 1970s, when hereditary class labels were very significant, anyone with a "counter-revolutionary" background, that is, anyone previously identified with the landlord or even rich peasant class, was a bad prospect for marriage. Such pariahs often had no choice but to marry the offspring of other families with "bad" class backgrounds. At the other end of the social scale, there appeared to be a high level of intermarriage among the children of high-level cadres.

Community structure
Most rural Chinese has lived in one of some 900,000 villages, which have an average population of from 1,000 to 2,000 people. Villages have never been self-contained, self-sufficient units, and the social world of Chinese peasants has extended beyond their home villages. Almost all new wives come into a village from other settlements, and daughters marry out. All villagers have close kinship ties with families in other villages, and marriage go-betweens shuttle from village to village.

Before 1950 clusters of villages centered on small market towns that linked them to the wider economy and society. Most peasants were only a few hours' walk or less from a market town, which provided not only opportunities to buy and sell but also opportunities for entertainment, information, social life, and a host of specialized services. The villages around a market formed a social unit that, although less immediately visible than the villages, was equally significant.

From the early 1950s on, China's revolutionary government made great efforts to put the state and its ideology into direct contact with the villages and to sweep aside the intermediaries and brokers who had traditionally interpreted central policies and national values for villagers. The state and the party were generally successful, establishing unprecedented degrees of political and ideological integration of villages into the state and of village-level awareness of state policies and political goals.

The unintended consequence of the economic and political policies of the 1950s and 1960s was to increase the closed, corporate quality of China's villages and to narrow the social horizons of villagers. Land reform and the reorganization of villages as subunits of people's communes meant that villages became collective landholding units and had clear boundaries between their lands and those of adjacent villages. Central direction of labor on collective fields made the former practices of swapping labor between villages impossible. The household registration and rationing systems confined villagers to their home settlements and made it impossible for them to seek their fortune elsewhere. Cooperation with fellow villagers and good relations with village leaders became even more important than they had been in the past. The suppression of rural markets, which accompanied the drive for self-sufficiency in grain production and other economic activities, had severe social as well as economic consequences. Most peasants had neither reason nor opportunity for regular trips to town, and their opportunities for exchange and cooperation with residents of other villages were diminished. Villages became work units, with all that that implied.

Decollectivization in the early 1980s resulted in the revival of rural marketing, and a limited relaxation of controls on out-migration opened villages and diminished the social boundaries around them. The social world of peasants expanded, and the larger marketing community took on more significance as that of the village proper was diminished. Village membership, once the single most important determinant of an individual's circumstances, became only one of a number of significant factors, which also included occupation, personal connections, and managerial talent.

Healthcare

After 1949, the Chinese healthcare system, in rural areas the first tier was made up of "barefoot doctors" working out of village medical centers. They provided preventive and primary-care services, with an average of two doctors per 1,000 people. The barefoot doctors emerged in 1968 when China lacked qualified health workers in rural areas and in 1985, China stopped using the term of barefoot doctor. Most of them were transferred to village doctors as private practitioners, making a living out of drug sales based on user fees. At the next level were the township health centers, which functioned primarily as out-patient clinics for about 10,000 to 30,000 people each. These centers had about ten to thirty beds each, and the most qualified members of the staff were assistant doctors. The two lower-level tiers made up the "rural collective health system" that provided most of the country's medical care. Only the most seriously ill patients were referred to the third and final tier, the county hospitals, which served 200,000 to 600,000 people each and were staffed by senior doctors who held degrees from 5-year medical schools.

In the late 20th and early 21st century, the availability and quality of health care varied widely from city to countryside. According to 1982 census data, in rural areas the crude death rate was 1.6 per 1,000 higher than in urban areas, and life expectancy was about 4 years lower. The number of senior physicians per 1,000 population was about 10 times greater in urban areas than in rural ones; state expenditure on medical care was more than -Y26 per capita in urban areas and less than -Y3 per capita in rural areas. There were also about twice as many hospital beds in urban areas as in rural areas. These are aggregate figures, however, and certain rural areas had much better medical care and nutritional levels than others.

Village life and expressive culture
Traditional Chinese village life focused on agricultural, ritual, and festival activities based closely on seasonal and environmental requirements. Early Western studies of Chinese village life dealt with villages in Hong Kong or Taiwan as mainland China was not accessible to Western scholars at that time. For a useful compendium of studies on the Hong Kong New Territories see James L. Watson and Rubie S. Watson (2004), which comprises studies based on fieldwork carried out from 1969 to 1997. For studies of village life in Taiwan see Seaman (1978), and Ahern and Gates (1981). In the 1980s and 1990s it became possible to undertake fieldwork in mainland China. Anthropologists  working in the mainland noticed the revival of pre-1949 religious and festival practices throughout rural China in the post-Mao era. Thomas David DuBois investigated village life in Cang County, Hebei, from 1997 to 2002. According to DuBois: "What has remained constant is that religion continues to permeate all aspects of life in rural North China," (DuBois 2005, p. 2).

Thousands of temples were rebuilt at village and county level in the reform era (post 1978). Temples provide entertainment and festival occasions as well as religious activity. According to Adam Yuet Chau, who studied the Dragon King Temple in rural Shaanbei in north China, the temple was the focus of entertainments such as folk operas, dance troupes, storytellers, and musicians (Chao, 2006, p. 242). He argues further that "Temple associations…have played an important role in expanding folk cultural space and the agrarian public sphere in contemporary China" (Chau, 2006, 242) Temple activities promote good community relations and offer assurance of mutual help in time of need (Chau, Miraculous Response, 144). For studies of the role of temples in the revival of Taoist sacrifices in Fujian see Dean (1993). He notes the importance of temples in the economic, political, and social life of the village (Dean,1993, 17). David Johnson has studied the close relationship between village temple opera and territorial units known as shȇ (Johnson 2009). He claims that village-level communal rituals were "the highest expression of the values and beliefs of ordinary people" (Johnson 2009, 10).

In the contemporary era (post 1978), village administrators, including communist party officials, can be very involved in the running of village temple activities (Tsai 2007, 140). However, other aspects of village culture, such as the performances of itinerant folk musicians, are subject to minimal regulation by the state (Jones 2009, xxi). Folk musicians carry out ritual roles as well as provide entertainment. Jones distinguishes between the "institutional" role of temple Buddhist and Daoist monks and the more "diffused" activities of lay Buddhist and Daoist ritual practitioners, many of whom are "ordinary peasants performing for life-cycle and calendrical ceremonies" (Jones, 2009, xxi). Very talented rural singers may be able to adapt their repertoire to attract both elite and popular audiences (Gibbs 2018). In border areas, informal and often hidden song traditions help bolster ethnic identities. For a study of the revival of the song and storytelling traditions of the Tai Lüe people of Sipsongpanna, Yunnan, see Davis (2005).

Village ritual, expressive culture, and festival activities reflect the villagers' struggle with their local environment. In southern rice-growing regions, which require intensive irrigation, both drought and floods can be a problem. The famous Chinese anthropologist, Fei Xiaotong, investigated village life in the Lower Yangzi Delta region in the 1920s. He observed that the villagers enacted religious ceremonies and rituals at times of drought, floods, and locusts (Fei, 2010, 134). For a comprehensive study of the ritual and expressive culture associated with rice growing in the Lower Yangzi Delta region see Jiang Bin (1996). Rice cultivators along the shores of Lake Tai in Jiangsu province believed that "the rice-seedling transformed from a young girl, to a pregnant wife, and finally to a Rice Mother bearing child-grains," (McLaren, 2022, xviii). Lake Tai songs and stories include tales of a local hero who brought back the art of rice growing from a paradisial land to his home village (McLaren, 2022, 77-110). The songs of the Kam people of Guizhou reflect local "environmental management and agricultural practices" in this rice-cultivation zone (Ingram 2011, 445). Ingram observes that these instructional songs "complement and assist in retaining longstanding farming techniques" (Ingram 2011, 446). Drought is a serious problem for villagers living in the region of the Yellow River. The Dragon King is venerated because he can dispense rain and save the community from drought (Chau, 2006, 79). The ritual operas of Aoshi in Shanxi were performed "to bring rain during droughts, to drive away disease, and to prevent fires, as well as to celebrate the New Year" (Johnson 2009, 71-72).

The resurgence of popular folk practices and beliefs after 1980 was largely due to the lack of economic advances in most of rural China during the period of high socialism. As Stephen Jones points out, "In Shaanbei, as elsewhere in China, one may partly relate the persistence of pre-Communist belief systems (like worship of the gods and ceremonial practices) throughout these periods to the inability of modern governments to transform the environment. The largely agrarian society has remained poor and partially dependent on divine blessing, even since the 1980s when some parts of the area made clear economic progress." (Jones, 2009, xix-xx).

See also
Hukou - system of household registration used in mainland China
Ten-star household
Urban society in the People's Republic of China
Women's healthcare in the People's Republic of China
Wokai - Organization that connects contributors worldwide with micro-entrepreneurs in rural China to help them start small businesses

References

Bibliography
 Yang, Dali. Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change since the Great Leap Famine. Stanford University Press, 1996.

Society of China
Agriculture in China
Rural society in Asia


On October 18, 2014 on the occasion 23rd anniversary of Independence Day of Azerbaijan the Embassy of Azerbaijan in Vietnam organized an event titled "Discover Azerbaijan" in Ba Vi National Park, Ao Vua Hotel. Representatives of Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam, Youth Organizations, International Departments of different universities, as well as students and journalists – in general 100 youths attended the event.
On his opening speech H. E. Mr. Anar Imanov Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Vietnam made broad presentation about the history and development path of Azerbaijan. Mr. Ambassador emphasized the role of Heydar Aliyev, National Leader of Azerbaijani People in establishing and developing the country and informed about the policy that is being implemented by the H. E. Mr. Ilahm Aliyev, President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. H. E. Mr. Anar Imanov, gave information about an aggression of Armenia against Azerbaijan and said that 20 percent of the territory of Azerbaijan have been occupied by Armenian armed forces. Mr. Ambassador gave information about 20 January events and Khojaly genocide, energy policy and culture of Azerbaijan, the history and current developments of the relations between Azerbaijan and Vietnam. During the presentation video clips about the different periods of Azerbaijani history and maps of historical territories of Azerbaijan were displayed. After the presentation of Mr. Ambassador the preparations procedures of Azerbaijani dishes – pilof, dolma and dushbara were shown and samples of Azerbaijani cuisine were served to attendees. In the course of the event quiz about Azerbaijan was held among the atendees and 11 teams named after the regions and cities of Azerbaijan competed. First task of the teams was to make a short presentation about the cities that their team was named after and later questions were asked about Azerbaijan history, geography, culture, art, cuisine. The winners of the quiz were Guba, Nakchivan and Karabakh teams. Along with teams, to the active participants of the quiz were presented awards. During the event information about the national dances of Azerbaijan were given and video clips were displayed. Then, national dances of Azerbaijan - "Uzundere" and "Nalbaki" were performed lively. After the performances attendees were taught the elements of Azerbaijani national dances. At the end of the event information were given about the traditions of Novruz holiday and video clips were displayed. After the presentation of Novruz holiday bonfire was burned and the attendees all together danced Azerbaijan national dance "Yalli" around the bonfire. The attendees appreciated the "Discover Azerbaijan" event as a great Azerbaijani holiday that has been held in Vietnam and emphasized that the event gave them broad information about Azerbaijan.


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Dark Skies Office
LENSS
McQuown Scholars
Sustaining Donations
Emily Sisco is Leaving GLAS
Emily Sisco, interim Dark Sky coordinator at GLAS Education, former Yerkes Observatory intern, long-time GLAS volunteer, 3D printing expert, and talented cook is leaving for the University of Massachusetts Amherst where she will be a Ph.D. candidate in German.Asked how she felt about Emily's departure, Kate Meredith, president and director of GLAS, replied: "Weepingly sad."
Adam McCulloch, GLAS education and outreach manager, said Emily's departure means GLAS is losing a key cog in its operations. "It's going to slow down a lot of 3D printing and a lot of accessibility tasks," Adam said. "I'll be playing with the 3D printers a lot more. The Dark Sky program will also have to go on the back burner for a little while until GLAS can hire a full-time director in the fall," he said.
Kate and Emily have known each other since 2018, when Emily, then a student at the University of Chicago, applied for an internship at Yerkes Observatory. Kate was director of the Yerkes Education Outreach program. "She was the very first person we interviewed," Kate said. She hired Emily immediately. Emily spent the summer of 2018 managing the 24-inch reflector telescope at Yerkes.
Unfortunately, Emily was hired at nearly the same time that the University of Chicago announced that it would close the observatory to the public in October that year. When Kate then moved the Yerkes education program into the nonprofit GLAS Education, Emily followed along and worked as an intern supervisor in 2021. Emily demonstrated her cooking chops when she prepared the Friday meals for the interns.
Adam's friendship with Emily started at Yerkes while they were working at the Observatory. Emily taught him how to operate the 24-inch reflector telescope. That friendship continued at GLAS, where the two sat across from each other in the office."We help each other out constantly," Adam said. "We use each other as a sounding board." Emily's decision to move on did not come as a surprise. "We knew it was coming. She wanted to be somewhere doing fun work before grad school." Adam believes that Emily's decision to earn a Ph.D. is a good one. "Whatever she chooses to do, she's one of those people who puts everything into it," Adam said.
According to Kate, Emily's contribution this year has been considerable. She's worked on improving the output of GLAS's 3D printers, which create tactile images for the blind and visually impaired. She helped with the plug plate project and when former Dark Sky director Danielle Eng left for her dream job in engineering, Emily took over and continued GLAS's Dark Sky project.
Emily has a degree in astrophysics from the University of Chicago, and her mastery of 3D printers is a clue to her technical expertise. A native of Oklahoma, Emily said her family has many connections to the Midwest, including an aunt who lives in the Chicago area. "It was never a big deal for me going to Chicago," she said. "I've grown up going to Chicago all my life. Chicago is my favorite city in the world. I'll miss it."
With a background in hard science and astrophysics, Emily's decision to earn a doctorate in German might come as a bit of surprise. "I had been wanting to study astrophysics since I was in 10th grade," Emily said, but In her second year at the university, Emily took a German class on a teacher's recommendation. "I had never taken a foreign language before," Emily said. "I absolutely fell in love with the language. Learning a new language opens up new viewpoints and understanding through a different culture," she said. "It's a way to get to know people. It's not just an American viewpoint," she said. This is not a family thing. Emily said she is aware of just one German in her family tree. "I have a German ancestor who moved to England in the 1870s," she said.She decided to go to the University of Massachusetts Amherst because it has an excellent German program and a collection of rare German films, which she finds fascinating.
While earning her degree in astrophysics in Chicago, Emily immersed herself in the German language and culture. "In the summer of 2019 I visited Germany and lived in Aachen and then went to Munich," Emily said. She also spent a month in Berlin, but the COVID crisis cut that visit short and also canceled a four-month visit to Vienna in 2020. With travel restrictions now relaxed in Europe, Emily is already planning her Christmas trip to Vienna.
However, she hasn't forgotten her astrophysics background. Emily plans on giving astronomy talks at area observatories and working at local planetariums. She found out that her Amherst roommate is a Ph.D. candidate in astrophysics. They'll have a lot to talk about.
For Kate, there is hope that Emily's separation from GLAS will not be permanent. "She does have a tendency to come back," Kate said.Emily confirmed that she and Kate have already talked about maintaining some ties. "Kate and I have talked about giving me a 3D printer," Emily said. She plans to return to Williams Bay from time to time when she has breaks from her Ph.D. studies.
GLAS will get along without Emily, but there will be a slight limp. Asked how GLAS will be able to fill Emily's shoes, Kate simply said: "They're not getting filled. She made herself indispensable."
STEAM merges Science, Technology, and Engineering with the Arts and Math
We're located at: N 2270 WI-67, Walworth, WI 53184 Building W5659-1
Monday & Friday: 9:00 am – 5:00 pm
Tuesday-Thursday 9:00 am – 6:00 pm

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Laughlin E. Waters, U. S. Atty., Bruce A. Bevan, Jr., Richard A. Lavine, Los Angeles, Cal., for appellee.
Jose Pimental-Navarro was ordered deported for having knowingly and for gain assisted, aided, and abetted an alien to enter the United States illegally. Proceeding under the Administrative Procedure Act (5 U.S.C.A. §§ 1001, 1009) and the Declaratory Judgment Act (28 U.S. C.A. § 2201), he instituted this action to obtain a review of that order. Judgment was entered for defendants, and plaintiff appeals.
It is conceded that the act charged is a specified ground for deportation. See 8 U.S.C.A. § 1251(a) (13), quoted in the margin.1 Appellant contends, however, that his return to the United States on March 4, 1954, following a visit of a few hours in Mexico (on which occasion the deportable act was found to have occurred) did not constitute an "entry," within the meaning of the quoted statute, and that his last prior statutory "entry" occurred more than five years previously.
The term "entry" is defined in 8 U.S.C.A. § 1101(a) (13).2 A return from a foreign port or place following even a brief excursion is an "entry," within the meaning of this definition. Resurreccion-Talavera v. Barber, 9 Cir., 231 F.2d 524; Schoeps v. Carmichael, 9 Cir., 177 F.2d 391, 396.
It is further contended that there is no substantial or probative evidence in the record that appellant assisted another alien to enter the United States "for gain." We find, however, that there is substantial and probative evidence in the record to support this finding.
Invoking 8 U.S.C.A. § 1254(a) and (e), appellant applied for suspension of deportation, or the privilege of voluntary departure. This was denied, on the ground that appellant was ineligible for such relief. Appellant challenges this determination.
"* * * a member of one or more of the classes of persons, whether excludable or not, described in paragraphs (11), (12), and (31) of section 1182(a) of this title."
"* * * any alien who at any time shall have, knowingly and for gain, encouraged, induced, assisted, abetted, or aided any other alien to enter or to try to enter the United States in violation of law."
The determination that appellant was ineligible for suspension of deportation or voluntary departure is accordingly correct and proper.
At the time of the deportation hearing, appellant applied for nunc pro tunc discretionary relief under 8 U.S.C.A. § 1182(c).3 The Board of Immigration Appeals denied this application. Appellant argues, in effect, that this was an abuse of discretion, because of the extreme hardship which will result, and in view of the fact that during the entire period of his residence in this country, beginning in 1920, and until the incident in question, he has been a person of good moral character.
We find no basis for judicial disturbance of the judgment which has been entered. Nevertheless, in view of the extreme hardship which will result, and the trifling nature of the offense, we think it appropriate to give the Board an opportunity to reconsider the denial of relief under 8 U.S.C.A. § 1182(c).
The facts which move us to adopt this course are not in dispute, and may be briefly stated: Appellant, who owns a modest home and operates a small grocery and vegetable peddling business, entered this country in 1920 and has lived here ever since — thirty-eight years. He is the father of six children, all natives and hence citizens of the United States. Three of the children are minors, the youngest being thirteen years of age. They live with their mother — appellant's wife — from whom he has been separated for twelve years. This means that if appellant must leave the country, he will be separated from his minor children.
His wife is not employed, and she and the minor children are totally dependent upon appellant for their support. He now contributes sixty dollars a month for their support, and also supplies them with groceries and vegetables worth twenty-five to thirty dollars a week.
Except for the incident here in question, there seems to be no flaw in appellant's record. He has never before been charged with a violation of law. Neither he nor his family has ever been a public charge. He registered for military service during the war.
In bringing an alien into the United States illegally and for gain, appellant yielded to temptation under most trying circumstances. On March 4, 1954, a person approached appellant while he was selling vegetables and offered him fifty dollars if he would bring one Sexto Medina into this country from Mexico. Appellant did not immediately accept this offer. But later his truck broke down and he was in need of funds to repair it. He decided to proceed to Tijuana, Mexico, to obtain a loan from a personal friend. If he found himself unsuccessful in this, however, it was his intention to try to obtain the needed funds by bringing Medina into this country.
Appellant was unable to borrow the money from his Mexican friend. Proceeding with his alternative plan to raise the funds, he tried to bring Medina into the United States, but was apprehended. He was not paid the promised fifty dollars, but received fifteen dollars to pay for gasoline.
The case is remanded, with instructions to the district court to remand the case to the proper administrative agency, to permit a reconsideration by it to determine whether, in the exercise of its discretion, it can grant some relief under 8 U.S.C.A. § 1182(c), or otherwise. If appellant's record is generally good, the size of his offense, under an urgent economic strain of the moment, is virtually de minimis.
"(13) prior to, or at the time of any entry, or at any time within five years after any entry, shall have, knowingly and for gain, encouraged, induced, assisted, abetted, or aided any other alien to enter or to try to enter the United States in violation of law."
"The term `entry' means any coming of an alien into the United States, from a foreign port or place or from an outlying possession, whether voluntarily or otherwise, except that an alien having a lawful permanent residence in the United States shall not be regarded as making an entry into the United States for the purposes of the immigration laws if the alien proves to the satisfaction of the Attorney General that his departure to a foreign port or place or to an outlying possession was not intended or reasonably to be expected by him or his presence in a foreign port or place or in an outlying possession was not voluntary: Provided, That no person whose departure from the United States was occasioned by deportation proceedings, extradition, or other legal process shall be held to be entitled to such exception."
"Aliens lawfully admitted for permanent residence who temporarily proceeded abroad voluntarily and not under an order of deportation, and who are returning to a lawful unrelinquished domicile of seven consecutive years, may be admitted in the discretion of the Attorney General without regard to the provisions of paragraphs (1)-(25), (30) and (31) of subsection (a) of this section. * *"
"* * * We are aware that the deportation of this respondent will result in a hardship to him because of his long period of residence in this country and because of his close family ties here. We are also aware that his deportation will result in a hardship to his minor children to whom he is contributing support. However, it is our opinion that the nature of the acts which give rise to deportability, which acts recently occurred, are such that the granting of the relief contained in Section 212(c) of the Immigration and Nationality Act is not warranted. The appeal will be dismissed."


text:
How to get Glastonbury Festival 2020 tickets if you missed out on the first wave
More opportunities to get tickets will arise next year
nottinghampost
Anna Gladwin
Carly Odell
You've still got a chance to be at Glastonbury Festival next year. (Image: PA)
Love Glastonbury? From tickets to headliners, sign up here for the latest updates from Worthy Farm
The first wave of tickets for Glastonbury Festival 2020 tickets sold in just 34 minutes when they went on sale on Sunday October 6.
100,000 lucky secured their tickets, but more than 2.4 million people registered so there are a lot of disappointed music lovers out there.
If you are one of those who missed out on the first ticket sales, fear not as the festival has announced when resales will take place.
To mark the festival's 50th anniversary, 50 pairs of tickets have also been held back which will be sold via a ballot to give those who missed out another chance, SomersetLive reports.
It is also likely that 'secret resales will take place again as they have for many years.
When buying Glastonbury Festival tickets in the general sale, customers must first pay a deposit at the point of sale and then pay the rest of the money before a deadline specified by the festival.
Ticket holders who paid a deposit this morning should receive a confirmation email within the next few hours.
The full ticket balance will then need to be paid in the first week of April 2020.
However, every year many people, for one reason or another, do not manage to pay the rest of the money, and therefore their tickets are up for grabs once again.
They are sold in the 'ticket resale', which is a secondary sale that takes a very similar form to the general sale.
Obviously, this sale is a lot smaller than the general sale, and so often sells out even quicker than the general sale.
When is it?
Glastonbury Festival confirmed that the ticket resale will be in April 2020.
There will be a resale of any returned coach and ticket packages on Thursday, April 16.
Glastonbury Festival 2018 (Image: Mirror Online)
This is followed by a general admission resale on Sunday, April 19.
Registration will open again on November 1.
What are the 'secret' ticket resales?
In previous years, a very limited number of tickets have gone on sale through the official Glastonbury Festival website, without warning.
Glastonbury Festival is a huge event and so there are a variety of reasons why a small number of tickets may become available after the main ticket sales.
If you want to be in with a chance of securing one of these tickets, it is a matter of being in the right place at the right time and checking back to ticket sale sites.
When do they happen?
It is typical for these 'secret' sales to happen after the main resale in April.
Scour social media and you'll see revellers claiming to have purchased tickets in secret resales in May before the 2015 and 2016 events.
In 2015, one person wrote on May 18: "Just nabbed a ticket in the secret Glastonbury resale! Lionel Richie I am coming to look at you sing."
Another lucky fan managed to bag a ticket during a resale in mid-May in 2016, just after the final refund date.
On May 12, 2016, Helen Clark wrote: "Don't think the feeling of getting a ticket in the secret resale will ever be topped."
MUSIC AND NIGHTLIFE
The greatest bands to play Rock City
15 years of the Rescue Rooms: Every gig
The biggest musical stars from Notts
Nottingham's best live music venues
In May 2019, she advised other users that while there was no secret sale last year, it is worth reading Glastonbury Festival forums to stay clued up.
What do I need to do to be in with a chance?
1. Make sure you are registered for tickets
If you have already registered for tickets, you will be fine, but if this will be your first time trying for Glastonbury tickets, you will have to register with the festival with a passport photo.
2. Set up a page alert for the Glastonbury Festival See Tickets page
There are many free 'page alert' tools that send a notification when a webpage changes, for example followthatpage.com.
If you set up an alert for the Glastonbury Festival ticket page, you should be notified if any changes are made to the page.
3. Be ready!
If a secret resale does happen, make sure you have your registration numbers, postcodes and bank card details to hand at a moment's notice.
Nottinghamshire dancer is 'living the dream' touring the world with top artists like Camilla Cabello and KSI
A dancer who has toured the world with top artists like Camilla Cabello, Ed Sheeran and KSI has shared what it's like to live the celebrity lifestyle.
New principal for Nottingham school who helped turn around struggling academy
"This academy is on a mission, and my role is to help it continue on that mission."


text:
set -ex

wget_opts="-N --tries=1 --connect-timeout=30"

cat << EOF  | wget ${wget_opts} -i - -P ${1:-/home/opnfv/functest/images}
http://download.cirros-cloud.net/0.4.0/cirros-0.4.0-x86_64-disk.img
https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/14.04/release/ubuntu-14.04-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img
https://cloud.centos.org/centos/7/images/CentOS-7-x86_64-GenericCloud.qcow2
https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/16.04/release/ubuntu-16.04-server-cloudimg-amd64-disk1.img
http://repository.cloudifysource.org/cloudify/4.0.1/sp-release/cloudify-manager-premium-4.0.1.qcow2
http://download.cirros-cloud.net/0.4.0/cirros-0.4.0-x86_64-lxc.tar.gz
http://download.cirros-cloud.net/daily/20161201/cirros-d161201-aarch64-disk.img
http://download.cirros-cloud.net/daily/20161201/cirros-d161201-aarch64-initramfs
http://download.cirros-cloud.net/daily/20161201/cirros-d161201-aarch64-kernel
https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/releases/14.04/release/ubuntu-14.04-server-cloudimg-arm64-uefi1.img
http://cloud.centos.org/altarch/7/images/aarch64/CentOS-7-aarch64-GenericCloud.qcow2.xz
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ool-opnfv/files/vyos-1.1.7.img
EOF

xz --decompress --force --keep ${1:-/home/opnfv/functest/images}/CentOS-7-aarch64-GenericCloud.qcow2.xz

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The formula for success continues with the seventh generation BMW 5 series. Thanks to the available state of the art chassis systems including Integral Active Steering, Driver and Parking Assistance Systems and Adaptive Mode, the all-new BMW 5 Series defines the athletic and executive design of a true sport sedan. Featuring a new user interface (iDrive 6.0), Gesture Control, the latest generation of Head-Up Display and an improved Voice Control with natural voice input, the 2017 BMW 5 Series marks a new era of personalized connectivity.
The new 2018 BMW M760Li xDrive is the first M Performance automobile in the flagship 7 Series family. The all-new M760 combines luxurious driving and style with safety and innovative technologies while embodying M Performance dynamics. The integration of the first 12-cylinder gasoline engine with M Performance Twin Power Turbo technology enables the flagship performance sedan to deliver 600 hp at 5,500 rpm and peak torque of 590 lb-ft from as low as 1,500 rpm. These performance figures enable the luxury sedan to accelerate from 0 to 100 km/h in just 3.7 seconds. The iDrive operating system is now available with touch screen technology offered in conjunction with the standard Navigation system. As the newest member to the 7 Series family, it also offers Gesture Control, which uses a series of pre-selected hand movements in the vicinity of the centre console to execute certain vehicle functions, for example, to accept or reject a phone call or adjust the volume. The new BMW 2018 M760Li xDrive will debut in Canada in summer of 2017.


Your registration for an event helps us in our planning, and is required for many of our GradFriday programs. If registration is closed, send us an email at gso@loyola.edu, and we will do our best to help.
Registration for Friday @ the FAC tonight has closed, but we do not wish to turn anyone away! If you would like to "meet or compete" this evening, please come! We just ask that you hold off on food, as we have already put in our catering order for those who have registered. Thanks for your understanding.
Event is open to current graduate students and their families, and graduate faculty and administrators. If child guests (under 18) are attending, there must be at least 1 adult. A maximum total of 2 adult guests (18 and older).


text:
Q: Help with Python strings I have a program which reads commands from a text file
for example, the command syntax will be as follows and is a string
'index command param1 param2 param3'
The number of parameters is variable from 0 up to 3
index is an integer
command is a string
all the params are integers
I would like  to split them so that I have a list as follows
[index,'command',params[]]
What is the best way to do this?
Thanks

A: Not sure if it's the best way, but here's one way:
lines = open('file.txt')
for line in lines:
   as_list = line.split()
   result = [as_list[0], as_list[1], as_list[2:]]
   print result

Result will contain
['index', 'command', ['param1', 'param2', 'param3']]

A: def add_command(index, command, *params):
    index = int(index)
    #do what you need to with index, command and params here

with open('commands.txt') as f:
    for line in f:
        add_command(*line.split())

A: i typically write:
lines = open('a.txt').readlines()
for line in lines:
    para = lines.split()
    index = int(para[0])
    command = para[1]
    para1 = float(para[2])
    ...

A: *

*Open the file

*Read each line and parse the line via line.split( )

A: >>> for line in open("file"):
...     line=line.rstrip().split(" ",2)
...     line[0]=int(line[0])
...     line[2]=line[2].split()
...     print line
...
[1, 'command', ['param1', 'param2', 'param3']]

A: If you use Python 3+, then following should be enough as indicated in PEP 3132: Extended Iterable Unpacking:
(index,command,*parameters) = line.split()

Otherwise, I like solution from James best:
def add_command(index, command, *params):
    ...

A: The Answer provided by cb160 is correct and smart way, But, I did it in this way.
In cb160's code, Only thing is index should be in Integer format, as you have mentioned.
In my below code, I added exceptions for empty lines in input file if there are any.
#Example Input File: (file content)
"""
1 command1 parm1a parm1b parm1c
2 command2 parm2a parm2b parm2c

3 command3 parm3a parm3b parm3c

"""

li = []

for line in open('list_of_commands.txt'):
  try:
    lis = line.split()
    li.append([int(lis[0]),lis[1], lis[2:]])
  except IndexError:
    pass    # do nothing if empty lines are found

print li

Output
[1, 'command1', ['parm1a', 'parm1b', 'parm1c']]
[2, 'command2', ['parm2a', 'parm2b', 'parm2c']]
[3, 'command3', ['parm3a', 'parm3b', 'parm3c']]

let me know if I missed anything.
Thanks

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Plenty of sunshine. High 3F. Winds SSW at 5 to 10 mph..
Clear to partly cloudy. Very cold. Low near -5F. Winds S at 15 to 25 mph.
School district settles lawsuit filed by former student
ELK POINT, S.D. (AP) — A school district in South Dakota will pay $65,000 to settle a discrimination lawsuit brought by a former honor student.
Addison Ludwig says she was singled out by the former Elk Point-Jefferson High School principal after she was featured in the student newspaper in 2017 and described a hobby as "Netflix n' Chill with my boyfriend."
Ludwig says she didn't know it was a term some use to describe casual sexual encounters until the principal, Travis Aslesen, made her look it up on the internet.
Aslesen revoked her senior privileges and honors study hall and removed her as editor of the newspaper. Ludwig in her lawsuit said male students who used the term had not been disciplined, including a boy who had used the term in a profile in the newspaper earlier in the year, the lawsuit said.
District Superintendent Derek Barrios released a copy of the settlement to the Argus Leader.
"The parties agree that the execution of this agreement is solely to avoid the ongoing cost and expense of litigation and is not an admission of liability, and that defendants, individually and collectively, affirmatively deny any liability or wrongdoing," the settlement said.
Ludwig graduated from Elk Point-Jefferson in May of 2018.
Primary And Secondary Education
Legal Settlements
Have you seen this person?
If you have, please call the Codington County Sheriff's Office at 605-882-6280 or go online to www.codingtonsheriff.com and click on the Tip Line link.


This interview with Marco Christian Krenn illustrates his opinion on his sponsorship by dkd.
We would like to take the chance to thank dkd for the sponsorship of Marco at this year's TYPO3 User eXperience Week.
Without dkd's engagement and support it would not have been possible for Marco to attend this important and fun event!


I know Perl now has given and when to simulate switch/case statements, but these are still experimental and are not guaranteed to be in future versions. Also there was a Switch module for Perl that existed in older versions, but it used source filtering and was considered not very good either so it went away.
Because of this, I decided to write my own module to simulate switch/case statements.
Switch - switch statements for Perl.
cases are tested or a break is encountered.
I have included some simple POD documentation that describes the usage.
To me the syntax looks quite elegant (it was the best I could do without using some sort of source filter myself).
Browse other questions tagged perl modules or ask your own question.
How should I pass settings to a module in Perl that also exports symbols?


text:
Remove This Item Category: Young Adult
Remove This Item Audiobook Publisher: christianaudio
Abridged (1)
Rise of the Fallen (Wars of the Realm, Book #2)
Author: Chuck Black
Narrator: Michael Orenstein & Leanne Bell
Runtime: 9.95 Hrs. - Unabridged
A six thousand year war rages and now the demonic Fallen are coming for him—the one man shrouded in mystery. Only Validus stands in their way. Validus is the last and least of God's angels, but he's seen much across the millennia since his creation. Empires have risen and fallen as angelic and demonic forces battle in a raging war that will determine humanity's fate – and the fate of his defeated brothers. Eventually called to be an earth-bound warrior, Validus rises to a position of power and respect, commanding legions of angels through impossible battles and overwhelming odds. But when orders arrive from the Creator's most elite Messenger, he finds himself suddenly demoted to a task of apparent insignificance considering the fierce war they are waging against the demonic Fallen – the covert protection of one unbelieving man. Validus soon finds himself on a mission that will push him beyond his abilities as he battles to protect Drew Carter, for the Fallen are coming for him. Legions of them. As Validus races against time to discover why Drew is so important to humanity's survival, can he stand between Drew and all who would destroy him?
Light of the Last (Wars of the Realm, Book #3)
Narrator: Michael Orenstein, Katie Leigh & Leanne Bell
To Fight What Others Can't You Must See What Others Don't After an accident left him temporarily blind, Drew Carter didn't just regain his sight. He now sees what others can't imagine–an entire spiritual realm of mighty beings at war. Forget the gift, Drew just wants his life back. Part of that involves Sydney Carlyle, a woman he is inexplicably drawn to. When he's offered the chance to become a CIA agent, it seems the way to redeem his past. The only problem–his visions of the supernatural realm are increasing in frequency. It's up to the warrior angel Validus and his hand-picked team of heavenly agents to protect the unbelieving Drew. Validus now knows that the young man is at the epicenter of a global spiritual war, and the angels must use a millennia of battle experience keep Drew alive, for the Fallen want him dead. Surrounded by spiritual warriors and targeted by demons, Drew's faced with an impossible decision that will forever alter the destiny of America...and his own soul.
The Pilgrim's Progress: For Young Adults
Author: John Bunyan
Narrator: Veronica Murphy
Runtime: 3.3 Hrs. - Abridged
Bunyan's preaching about the gravity of sin, salvation by grace, the cost of discipleship, perseverance, and the glory of eternal life lives on in the signs and symbols of The Pilgrim's Progress.
Learning to Love (Yasmin Peace Series, Volume #4)
Author: Stephanie Perry Moore
Narrator: Robin Miles
Runtime: 4.5 Hrs. - Unabridged
Yasmin Peace has been through a lot in the last year. After losing her oldest brother, Yasmin and her family lose their apartment in a fire. As if that was not enough Yasmin's grandmother is diagnosed with Alzheimer's. Through all of these difficult situations, Yasmin maintains hope.
Experiencing the Joy (Yasmin Peace Series, Volume #3)
Graduating from eighth grade Yasmin starts summer on a positive note. Everything she's learned about self-esteem and true joy from the LIGHT club however will be put to the test as she faces new challenges with family, friends, and her first year in high school.
Finding Your Faith (Yasmin Peace Series, Volume #1)
Yasmin Peace is growing up fast. After the tragic suicide of her oldest brother; she takes on the responsibility of overseeing what's left of her family and through it all; she perseveres. As she sheds her tomboy exterior and finds her faith, Yasmin blossoms into the young lady God destined her to become.


text:
Divine Action and Extraordinary Events: Can Miracles Occur
However, while on the acim twitter simple and clear, this definition encounters difficulties in application. And given that at least one major religion, Christianity, holds as a core tenet that God-made-man, Jesus Christ, performed miracles, these difficulties can call into question a major Christian tenet.
So while these difficulties enter into the realm of the esoteric, we should delve into their intricacies. We will examine three issues:
The noted 16th century philosopher David Hume voted to the negative, i.e. valid testimony can not be offered. For him, such testimony faces an essentially insurmountable hurdle. Hume stated:
"No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless it is of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact that it tries to establish.
"For, first, never in all of history has a miracle been attested by a sufficient number of men, of such unquestioned good sense, education, and learning as to guarantee that they aren't deluded; of such undoubted integrity as to place them beyond all suspicion of wanting to deceive others; of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have much to lose if they were found to have told a falsehood; and at the same time testifying to events-the reported miracle-that occurred in such a public manner and in such a famous part of the world as to make the detection of any falsehood unavoidable. All these conditions must be satisfied if we are to be completely confident of the testimony of men.
In other words, a miracle stands as so momentous and at the same time so unlikely, and mankind so notably fallible and imperfect, that no person could given testimony sufficiently credible. We should more question the testimony than believe the miracle.
Note, however, that is in our world. Mankind's fallibility pertains to our actual, contingent, messy, version of a world.
Philosophy allows us to consider not just our world, but possible worlds. So could we, in some conceivable world, a world with a better human nature, achieve sufficiently credible testimony? Certainly. Give people more accurate perceptions, higher moral integrity and improved mental memory. Or populate the world with Three Rule Asimov robots. The accuracy of testimony in such conceivable worlds could rise to sufficient integrity.
Now, in Hume's time, maybe such a world could not be conceived. But today, such a conceived world could become a real world.
Compared to the time of Hume, we possess sophisticated technology. We can record, detail and store recordings and data of all types. We can collect phenomena in multiple media. We can disseminate, cross-check, review, question, and otherwise scrutinize reports and data of any occurrence.
So, if in our time the walls of Jericho have been foretold to come down at the sound of trumpets after seven days of marching, CNN, and Fox, and every news outlet, and a plethora of scientific instruments, and an array of digital recording devices, would stand ready to observe, record and document the event.
I will leave as not discussed a corollary, but unfortunate question. The miracles of God-made-man, of Jesus, did not occur under the scrutiny of modern techniques, but two millennium ago. Does the testimony of that time from ancient Galilee rise to sufficient accuracy to attest to a miracle? We will not discuss that here, but we are left to ponder the question.
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